Reviews

SCOTT SLAY THE RAIL Bonfire Recording Co. BRC5011 Working from Denver, Colo., Slay has created a new project featuring his unique style. (This follows prior work with Big Virginia Sky and a 2015 release under that name.) Scott displays his writing skills on eight of the thirteen tracks, which also includes one, “Truth Came Out,”…

WILLARD GAYHEART & FRIENDS AT HOME IN THE BLUE RIDGE Blue Hens Music No Number Within the southwestern Virginia and northwestern North Carolina old-time and bluegrass communities, Willard Gayheart is one of the best loved and most respected figures. Willard has gained such acclaim for his intricate drawings of people and places in central Appalachian…

MIKE COMPTON & NORMAN BLAKE GALLOP TO GEORGIA  Taterbug Records 6451    Gallop To Georgia features two of America’s greatest stringband experts and revivalists, playing note-perfect renditions of 16 instrumental tunes from legendary Mississippi act Narmour & Smith, authors of “Carroll County Blues” and many more. The music here is raw and angular, undisturbed by modern chord…

HARRY BOLICK AND 44 FRIENDS THE COMPLETELY LOST MISSISSIPPI FIDDLE TUNES No Label No Number Harry Bolick has published a book about fiddle tunes from his home state of Mississippi. In his research for that book, he found many titles for which the recordings were lost or never existed. Bolick calls these “orphaned” titles for…

JEAN-LUC LEROUX MANDOLOGIE Sacenc JLL 010 Writing instrumental tunes can come as naturally to some musicians as playing them, and the mandolin world is no exception to this trend. Mandologie is a collection of ten mandolin instrumentals composed and played by Jean-Luc Leroux, a French-born picker and bluegrass lover who now resides in New Caledonia in the…

JOHN DUFFEY’S BLUEGRASS LIFE FEATURING THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN, SELDOM SCENE, AND WASHINGTON, D.C. BY STEPHEN MOORE AND G.T. KEPLINGER Booklocker 9781632638397.  Foreward by Tom Gray, paperback, 365 pp., $19.99. (BookLocker, 200 2nd Ave. S., #526, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, www.booklocker.com.) It’s rare to come across a book that so perfectly matches its subject matter in content and…